


Sunshine

by YellowLion



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Comedy, F/M, Romantic Comedy, Taz spoilers, ep66 spoilers, he calls her sunshine okay in my hcs and im dying, i used to be like wtf griffin why barry bluejeans he's not special, im awful ok, ive been murdered, merle and taako are there for like two seconds, one 1 second of him begging to remember lup and im deadass crying over this throwaway joke of a man., thanks to the adventure zone for annihilating my fucking feelings again tm, this was immediately in my head when barry was begging to die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 06:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11351901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YellowLion/pseuds/YellowLion
Summary: Barry loves Lup.





	Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so big fat warning there's implied suicide/murder??? Idrk just listen to ep66 before reading this.

It’s hard enough living with the memories. Living with her laughter at some stupid joke he had made, living with the way it had felt to hold her hand and talk for hours and hours about nothing at all, living--living without her is hard enough.

 

He remembers all too easily, all too sudden--he moves a plate to the sink and remembers the way it felt to hug her from behind as the suds coated her fingers. He writes a letter on a page, remembers the way she wrote messily and how each letter was barely legible. He keeps her clothes in their shared closet, keeps all her things exactly as she left it. He sleeps elsewhere, hardly ever changes clothes, he doesn’t need the memories to distract him from his search. He once sat on their bed late at night though, let the memories of her getting ready with a shake and a shimmy, asking for his opinion on her outfit only to come out in something either incredible or hilarious. Her dancing with a feather boa she found somewhere or maybe conjured, making him laugh so hard he nearly passed out--the boa a little constricting too, her face as Merle rushed into the room to give him the Heimlich. The way the awkwardness seemed to both amplify and melt around her in a way that was indescribable and the funniest damn thing he had ever encountered. He sees a flash of her in the way Taako turns and he feels his heart drop. He sees it in Taako’s face, the way Taako knows how he feels. They don’t talk about it.

 

She’s not dead, he would know. He would  _ know.  _ He would or else what’s the point of looking for a body, but he has to believe he would feel it. He would feel her heart stop because so would his, and he can’t imagine a world where they don’t die together so they never have to live without one another.

 

She’s not dead, she would find him. She would be a lich and she’d find him. She wouldn’t leave him.

 

She wouldn’t.

 

He takes a step onto the deck and the clouds remind him of a time where she pointed out a cloud shaped like a dog looked like him. He said she looked like the sun--so bright he could hardly stand it sometimes, fierce and wild and practically untouchable. There were days he remembered the way they hadn’t always been in tune, days the sun burned his skin and he had to scream at the sky. Days he regretted, because he had thought then the anger, the pride, the righteous feeling of being wronged when you were right--that is worth more than giving in, than talking it out, than compromise. He wished he had compromised more in the beginning. 

 

He remembers casual bickering, moments of insults, and he wishes they had been compliments. He wished he had said he loved her more. He said it every day but it wasn’t enough. It didn’t make up for the thirty, one hundred, three hundred and forty-four days he couldn’t tell her.

 

He had already lost some things, forgetting sometimes in the middle of dropdown, the middle of a quiet moment between talking to those on the ground.  _ How did her hair feel? Didn’t she make him blueberry pancakes that one time? Or were they biscuits? _

 

Memories are slipping through his fingers like sand, he’s so desperate to hold onto every grain, maybe they’ll tell him where she is. Maybe there’s some clue. He’s run the last three days they were together over and over in his mind, analyzing everything. The party, the night he held her as she cried in his arms, sobbing and hiccuping out her memory of the robot city--the one she had promised to save. The one where she took a stand, and now the world below had been destroyed by them because she had lost sight. She had to remember.

 

Then there’s the moment when everything changes. When Taako says in the most agonizing way, innocent, as if they were strangers–”Who?”

 

He’s begging, screaming at him as he feels the sand slip faster and he doesn’t understand what’s happening but he’s not going to forget. It’s hard enough living with the memories but he would rather die than forget. He will die, he has to die because he will remember. He has to remember, every breath is her’s, and he belongs to her. It’s not his choice to make, he loves her so deeply, so vastly, he would give himself, give the world up, give everything to keep her alive. He is so desperate, so afraid, but so sure of himself as he screams at Taako--and he’s falling.

 

He smiles as he dies because the sun shines on him then. The sun is radiant as his body falls to the ground, and he has lost everything. Everything.

 

Everything except Lup. He’s going to find her. He has to find her. 

 

He's the only one who can and he keeps trying—and failing. He doesn't understand why he's being hunted but nevermind that, he keeps going. The loss is terrifying each time, what will he remember when he dies again? Will he forget something else? 

 

Because when he dies he's never sure what will stay with him because every time he goes into lich form, it is a powerful severing from his body, never clean cut. He's terrified of losing Lup.

 

But he has to, he has to keep trying because what point is there to the awful power and immortality he has if it isn't for her?

 

He's losing himself bit by bit, till he's left with only a few memories to prove to his body that it's really him. He sacrifices what memories he can so he keeps more of her.

 

He's holding so tightly to the sand that he never loses her. It's hard enough living with the memories, harder when that's all you have anymore, hardest when you're running out of time.

 

He's running out of daylight, and this is it. This is it.


End file.
